Chapter 49: Raft Upgrade

Chapter 49: Chapter 49: Raft Upgrade

Before she knew it, Rowan Rhodes had already accumulated twenty-nine Storage Boxes. Even stacked away in various corners, they were exceptionally conspicuous and took up a tremendous amount of space. Moreover, as time went on, the number of Storage Boxes would only continue to grow. Eventually, her raft would be completely covered in them. She realized that might actually not be such a bad thing after all.

With that in mind, Rowan opened the Storage Box specifically used for Metal Ingots. Her biggest harvest this time around was these Metal Ingots, seeing as the main body of the cruise ship had been entirely made of them. Consequently, aside from the outermost ring of Metal Rafts she already had, she now had enough materials to upgrade the rest of the raft into Metal Rafts as well.

[Metal Rafts x64: Wooden Boards x640, Metal Ingots x640, iron nails x640]

After the resources were deducted, all of the raft’s foundations were upgraded to Metal Rafts. The entire raft now looked much more refined.

Aside from upgrading the Metal Rafts, Rowan also planned to add levels to her raft. Just as the saying went, if the raft’s surface area was insufficient, Nature dictated that it had to be expanded vertically. As for why she didn’t just proceed with an Expansion? That was because before her raft level reached Level 10, the raft’s maximum area was capped at 100 square meters. Until she upgraded to a Level 10 Raft, she intended to focus on accumulating resources. When the time came, she would build out the raft all in one go.

During this process, she could take the time to properly design a blueprint for the raft. She could even reserve space for certain structures for when she eventually entered the Coastal Waters Region. First were the living area and the working area. She aligned the second floor directly with the Wooden House in the living area. Once the second floor was built, she moved on to the third. The third floor covered the entire 100 square meters. After all, due to the trees in the planting area, only a third floor would be spacious enough to accommodate them. Just like that, a three-story raft took shape.

With the foundation laid, Rowan began her construction. First, she moved the majority of her Storage Boxes to the second-floor working area, building a set of stairs in the middle for easy access to resources while crafting. As for the second-floor living area, since it connected directly to her room, Rowan laid down Grassland and moved her small planting pots over. Currently, the small pots were growing potatoes, sweet potatoes, and Watermelons, which she arranged in neat rows.

Rowan also adjusted the layout of the primary planting area. She arranged the large soil planters row by row—one row of palm trees, one row of Coconut trees, one row of Mango trees, and one row of regular trees. This arrangement was highly visually pleasing. Following that, she relocated the pasture directly into the planting area, expanding its original size of 6 square meters to a sprawling 25 square meters. Since the first and second floors offered plenty of space, Rowan decided to dedicate the entire third floor to farming. With that, her initial layout was finalized.

With the raft’s construction finalized, Rowan turned her attention to the Unlockable Equipment. Now that her resources were abundant, she could finally unlock them. The first was the Engine. Now that she had a Steering Wheel, it could be operated immediately. Rowan directly crafted two Engines and placed them on either side of the raft. Once the installation was complete, she mounted the Steering Wheel at the very front of the raft.

[Equipped with Engine and Steering Wheel, raft Speed increased by 10%.]

[Please add fuel to the Engine.]

The newly built Engines were currently F-level, meaning they required one unit of Wooden Boards per hour to run. Rowan immediately fed Wooden Boards into the Engines. The moment the fuel was added, the raft sped up, and rolling whitecaps began to form on either side. Previously, the raft’s speed in the ocean had been akin to merely drifting with the current, and even with the sail, it had only been slightly faster. It was only now, equipped with an Engine and a Steering Wheel, that it finally had true Speed. With this in mind, Rowan began upgrading the Engines and the Steering Wheel, taking them from F-level to E-level. The Engines’ Speed boost subsequently increased from 10% to 20%.

Next came the Fish Spear Gun and fish spear ammunition. The critical resource required for the Fish Spear Gun was an oxygen bottle. Upon completing their construction, Rowan immediately equipped them along the perimeter of the raft. If any marine creatures attacked, she would only need a few rounds of fish spear ammunition to deal with them. A shark, for example, would only take two shots. Furthermore, during future battles with other rafts, having abundant ammunition meant she could potentially pierce right through her opponents’ vessels. Compared to many late-game weapons, the Fish Spear Gun offered incredibly high value for its cost. It would also prove highly useful when the Extreme Cold Disaster arrived. With this, the raft had undergone yet another complete overhaul.

The Seagull Family had been eating nearby earlier. Watching Rowan construct the raft, they hadn’t bothered her. Now that the renovations were complete, they began to waddle around the raft, their expressions filled with curiosity. The raft was growing larger and larger; to them, it was practically no different from a full-fledged island.

Seabird One approached Rowan and began to squawk. It knew that Rowan could understand it.

[Move~]

[High~]

Catching the keywords, Rowan instinctively asked, "Do you want to live on the top floor?"

Seabird One nodded.

Hearing this, Rowan directly built an additional room above her second-floor living area, then moved the furniture originally prepared for Seabird One’s flock on the first floor up to the third floor. Being higher up was better anyway; it was a much more suitable habitat for them. Seeing that Rowan had finished setting everything up, Seabird One happily flew up to the third-floor room. Before long, various cheerful SQUAWKS of laughter could be heard ringing out in midair.

A faint smile graced Rowan’s lips as she continued to organize her resources.

With the Sea Survival Shop, her inventory of goods was visible at a glance, making it perfectly clear exactly how much of each resource she possessed. For her, the amount of idle materials was quite substantial. However, she had no intention of listing them for sale just yet. After all, the number of players across all districts was simply too massive; no matter how much she hoarded alone, it would never be enough to meet the demand. Rather than constantly facing inventory shortages, she planned to list items at scheduled times moving forward, allowing the players to develop a routine.

Opening the exchange tab of the Sea Survival Game, she saw that the shop Level was currently still Level 0. To upgrade to Level 1, the number of transactions needed to reach 100,000. It had already hit 89,345, and thanks to regular players, the count was continuously climbing. Barring any accidents, it might even level up tonight.

She wasn’t in a hurry. She intended to list items just once a day from now on. In addition to selling her surplus resources, she could also use Trading Coins to exchange for goods in the Sea Survival Shop. She planned to stock cold-resistance Equipment and food tomorrow once the other players finally realized the extreme cold was coming.

As for right now, she needed to prepare for herself first. The top priorities were Hot Stones and geothermal cores. When thrown into a Furnace, Hot Stones could imbue weapons with a flame Effect, granting a damage bonus against creatures adapted to the extreme cold. Meanwhile, geothermal cores could be used to craft temperature control devices to maintain the raft’s ambient temperature.

On her own, she had already amassed forty-one Hot Stones and twenty-two geothermal cores. The twenty-two geothermal cores, in particular, would definitely be more than enough to survive a three-day freeze once converted into temperature control devices.

As for the Hot Stones, she could integrate them into a Simple Bow and Arrow to upgrade it into a Flaming Fire Bow and Arrow. This step was absolutely essential! The marine creatures of the Extreme Cold Disaster would be far more troublesome to deal with than those from the Extreme Heat Disaster!

The very next moment, Rowan began purchasing Hot Stones and geothermal cores in the trading hall of District 122. Unsurprisingly, the instant her purchase request went live, it immediately became the hottest topic on District 122’s world channel.